Rise Of The Black Sovereign

Chapter 6

After that, the rest of the evening went surprisingly calm, though not before Harlan had stormed off and Darius had followed almost immediately after him.

Kael followed Xena back to her house after the party so as to make the arrangements even more real because they knew that a lot of eyes would be on them now.

But Kael had something important he need to do so he waited until the Vale estate had gone quiet before he moved.

Xena's wing of the house had fallen dark an hour ago. The guards at the outer gate had changed shift and settled into the slow rhythm of men expecting nothing to happen tonight. Rain still fell outside, steady and soft against the windows, the kind of rain that made people stay inside and made the streets easy to disappear into.

Kael stepped out onto the balcony of the guest room where he was staying, checked once that no one was watching, and pressed two fingers against a small device hidden beneath his collar.

"Bastian." He called.

"Sovereign." The voice came back instantly, clear and familiar, carrying none of the caution Kael had spent the whole evening wearing like a second coat. "I take it the engagement went as planned."

"It went," Kael said. "Send the transport."

"Already here. One floor down, in the garden. I assumed you'd want to leave the way nobody watches."

Kael almost smiled. Bastian always assumed correctly.

Five minutes later, he was in the air.

The transport rose silently above Ashfall City, its hull dark and unlit, invisible against the storm clouds rolling overhead. Below him, the city shrank into a scatter of small lights, its towers and walls and crowded streets folding into something that looked, from this height, almost peaceful and small.

Kael watched it go, feeling the tight, careful version of himself loosen with every passing second. Down there, he was a nobody. A footnote. A man who got slapped in front of a hundred people and said nothing back.

Up here, he didn't have to be anything at all. He just had to be himself.

The clouds broke apart ahead of him, and Heavenly City came into view.

It rose out of the mist like something that didn't belong to this broken world. Towers of pale light suspended above the Wasteland, humming faintly with the glow of Sovereign Energy running through every wall and street below. No fortified gates here. No armed guards nervously eyeing strangers. Just quiet, patient power, built piece by piece over years nobody in Ashfall City would ever know about.

The transport descended through a private channel cut into the city's lower ring, landing soundlessly in a hangar lit by soft blue light. Bastian was already waiting on the platform, a tall man in a simple gray uniform, his face unreadable in the way it always was, though something in his posture eased slightly the moment Kael stepped out.

"Sovereign." Bastian inclined his head. "You look like you had an eventful evening."

"That's one word for it." Kael rolled his shoulder, feeling the last tension of the night finally drain out of it. "Report."

"The shipping acquisition is proceeding as planned. Lord Kane's family still has no idea which company now controls their western contracts, let alone who stands behind it." Bastian fell into step beside him as they walked from the hangar into a wide corridor lined with glass, the city's lights glittering faintly beyond it. "I've also pulled a full financial profile on Reginald Voss, per your earlier instruction. His exposure is worse than I expected. If the Kane family's fortunes slip even slightly, his own collapse within a year or two."

"Good," Kael said. "Don't move on it yet. Let him feel steady a little longer first."

"Understood." Bastian glanced sideways at him. "May I ask how the engagement itself went? I only have the official filing. Lady Vale's public statement to the Council was... efficient."

"She's efficient," Kael said. "It's one of the few things I like about her so far."

They passed through a set of doors into a wide command chamber, where three officers in Black Legion uniforms stood over a holographic display, tracking something Kael couldn't immediately identify from this distance. One of them, a sharp-eyed woman with close-cropped hair, looked up and straightened the moment she saw him.

"Sovereign." She saluted, crisp and immediate. "Commander Reyes reporting. Wasteland patrol flagged unusual movement near the eastern ridge two hours ago. Readings don't match any known beast signature we have on file."

Kael's attention sharpened instantly. "Show me."

The hologram shifted, zooming into a stretch of broken terrain Kael recognized from a dozen old patrol routes. A cluster of red markers pulsed slowly across the display, moving in a pattern too coordinated to be random animal migration.

"They're grouping," Kael said quietly. "Not hunting. Grouping."

"That was our read as well," Reyes said. "We haven't engaged. Waiting on your orders."

Kael studied the pattern a moment longer, something cold and familiar settling into his chest. Not fear exactly. Just the old, patient instinct that had kept him alive through things most people in Ashfall City would never believe were real.

"Keep watching," he said. "Don't engage unless they move toward a settlement. I want eyes on this every six hours, not twelve."

"Understood, Sovereign."

He turned away from the display, and Bastian fell back into step beside him as they walked toward the private wing of the command tower, the one no one but Kael and a handful of his most trusted people had ever set foot inside.

"You're troubled," Bastian said quietly, once they were alone again in the corridor.

"I'm always troubled by things that move in patterns they shouldn't," Kael said.

"I meant about tonight. The engagement. The woman."

Kael was quiet for a moment, watching the city lights slide past the glass. Down below, somewhere past the clouds, Ashfall City was still sleeping through the rain, still completely unaware that the man they'd watched get slapped in public tonight commanded all of this. The towers. The army. The quiet, hidden machinery slowly closing around the people who thought they'd already won.

None of them knew his name up here. Not really. To the handful of people standing in this tower tonight, he wasn't the nobody from the promotion hall.

“Sometimes I still remember the man who walked out of the Wasteland six years ago.” Bastian said.

Kael's expression hardened. “That man is dead.”

Bastian lowered his head. “No, Sovereign. That man became you.”

He remembered the day Kael had been found half-dead inside the ruins after the expedition. Everyone else who entered that area had died. Kael was the only survivor.

But he hadn't returned the same.

A strange black core had fused with his body, giving him an ability no Awakened had ever possessed. He could absorb monster cores instead of simply using their energy.

At first, Kael could barely control the power. He spent months fighting in the Wasteland, learning how to survive and control the energy inside him.

As his strength grew, he began gathering people around him.

Those people eventually became the Black Legion.

Then Kael built Heavenly City. That was when the world unknowingly gained its Black Sovereign.

"As for the engagement, I'm fine," Kael said finally. "It's a contract. Nothing more."

Bastian didn't look entirely convinced, but he didn't push. "And Lyanna Voss?"

Something flickered behind Kael's eyes, there and gone too fast to name.

"Pull everything we have on the Voss family's debts," he said, instead of answering. "All of it. I want to know exactly how deep that family's roots go before I decide what to do about any of them."

"Understood, Sovereign."

Kael looked out once more at the lights of his own city, spread out silent and glowing beneath the storm, and said nothing else at all.